Chapter 197 Comparison
Business information needs to be provided by friends, but friends need to be made through specific circles.
Just like An Rusong, if it were placed in the past, there would not have been any kind of intersection between him and Luo Quanyi, even if the property he wanted to buy belonged to the latter. But without the existence of Macaulay and Mike, he and Luo Quan would not have the opportunity to communicate face to face and get to know each other in depth.
Of course, there will be no intersection between him and the Jin Bingzuo Luo Quan also mentioned, at least not in the short term.
But it’s different now. It was precisely because An Rusong had a good relationship with Macaulay and Mike that he had the opportunity to meet Luo Quanyi, and through Luo Quanyi, he got another The opportunity to meet Jin Bingzuo was like this, one after another, one after another. His social circle was enlarged in this kind of interaction, and these were very important to his career. All very valuable and critical.
An Rusong didn't know Luo Quanyi very well. He had never heard of this person's name in his previous life, but he had some memory of the Jin Bingqiu mentioned by Luo Quanyi. After all, the other party once defeated the Samsung Lee family and retained the title of the richest man in South Korea for several years. The main source of Jin Bingzuo's assets is the MBK company mentioned by Luo Quan.
In South Korea, Kim Bingjo’s fame is far inferior to that of the Samsung Lee family, but the lack of fame does not mean that the financial resources are inferior. The most important thing is that the wealth of the Samsung Lee family is basically the same. They are all industrial investments. If the Li family really comes up with billions of dollars in cash at once, they really don't necessarily have the strength.
But the situation of Kim Byung-joo is different. He is an investor, and the most he has is cash. The most important thing is that behind this guy is a full American background. In the Republic of Korea, Some people will target the Samsung Li family and Li Zai Rong, but no one will target Jin Bingqiu.
However, Kim Byung-joo's career should be considered to be in its infancy now. The amount of capital invested by MBK is only 1 trillion Korean won, which is 1 billion U.S. dollars when converted into U.S. dollars. Among them, the funds that truly belong to Jin Bingzuo are estimated to be less than 5%, and the majority of them are estimated to belong to large investment institutions including Carlyle Investments.
Luo Quan also said that MBK is currently operating the Daewoo Precision Machinery project. An Rusong knows something about the operation he mentioned. It is nothing more than integrating the assets of Daewoo Precision Machinery and integrating those high-quality Integrate the assets together, get rid of all the losing parts, then turn the entire enterprise into a profit, and finally sell it at a higher price.
This kind of investment operation is actually a "vulture" behavior. Although it cannot be said that it lacks a sense of morality, it is still unpopular.
As for An Rusong's NGN, although it does not operate an industry in the traditional sense, in the final analysis, what NGN relies on is a technology, which itself can create wealth for society. of.
To put it bluntly, to measure the influence of a rich man, we cannot just look at how much money he has in his hands, but also how many people depend on him for survival. As the richest man in South Korea for several consecutive years, why is Kim Byung-joo less influential in South Korea than Samsung Lee? To put it bluntly, it’s because he supports so few people. One MBK investment can support up to a hundred or ten people, but Samsung can’t even multiply tens of thousands more on the basis of this number.
Although An Rusong's NGN cannot be compared with Samsung, it is much more influential than MBK.
Indeed, NGN cannot support many people, but the people involved in its business are very large. The foundation of MBK is money, pure money, because it itself is responsible for managing capital for others. , and the foundation of NGN is registered users. The tens of millions or hundreds of millions of registered users are the basis for NGN to make profits. From this point of view alone, the influence of NGN is inherently higher than that of MBK.
Judging from these factors, An Rusong now really has no need to feel inferior when facing Jin Bingqiu. On the contrary, he should be more confident than the latter. After all, NGN is a Korean company. A hot investment topic, if Jin Bingqiu's MBK can get the opportunity to invest in NGN, then MBK's performance table is expected to become more attractive, thus making it more attractive to potential investors.
After talking about MBK, Luo Quan also teased the second thing about his visit to Korea.
According to him, another purpose of his coming to South Korea this time is to sign a shipping lease contract with Hanjin Shipping Company on behalf of a company he is currently investing in.
It was at this time that An Rusong learned that Luo Quan was actually the world's largest shipowner and the largest private shareholder of Canada's Sespan Shipping Group. At the same time, he also controlled a The asset management company named "GuaonJi", as Mike said, is quite famous in the financial circle of Wall Street.
However, after hearing that one of Luo Quanyi’s purposes for coming to South Korea this time was to sign a shipping lease contract with Hanjin Shipping Group on behalf of Sespan Shipping Group, An Rusong face The expression on his face was a bit strange. According to Luo Quanyi, the decision-makers of Hanjin Shipping Group are generally optimistic about the future prospects of the international shipping business, so they hope to increase the business volume in this area, so they contacted Sespan Shipping Group, hoping to Won the seven 10,100 TEU ships owned by the group, which are long-term leases for container ships.
In order to compete with potential competitors, including COSCO Shipping Lines, Maersk Line and other rivals, Hanjin Shipping Group offered Sespan very favorable conditions, including a lease period of up to ten years and a fixed The high rental rate of US$43,000 per day per vessel. With such favorable conditions, Sespan Shipping Group naturally had no reason to refuse, so Luo Quan could not wait to come to Seoul.
What’s interesting is that in An Rusong’s memory of his previous life, Hanjin, the largest shipping company in South Korea and one of the top ten in the world, failed to survive in the end. It seemed that in 2017 It went bankrupt around the time, and subsequently, its resources were acquired by its competitor COSCO Shipping Lines.
What’s even more interesting is that the most direct reason for Hanjin Shipping’s bankruptcy seems to be related to the ships that Sespan leased to it, because after the subprime mortgage crisis, global shipping has never recovered. , not only failed to recover, but due to intensified competition, the profits of the shipping industry continued to decline in the following ten years. The seven ships Han Jin rented from Sespan forced Han Jin to suffer huge losses every year.
Not to mention other expenses, Han Jin has to shell out US$100 million in real money every year just for the rental of the seven ships, not to mention that the lease lasts for ten years. , If it doesn’t go bankrupt, who will go bankrupt?
The meeting with Macaulay and the three lasted until nearly nine o'clock at night. When they finally left, Luo Quan also exchanged business cards with An Rusong and agreed to keep in touch in the future. In Luo Quanyi's own words, he is also very optimistic about the future development of NGN. If there is an opportunity to invest in NGN, he will not hesitate to choose to join the game.
The hotel Luo Quan also booked was the Shilla Hotel. Therefore, when the party ended, An Rusong, Macaulay and Mike made an appointment to leave together.
While taking the elevator downstairs, Macaulay told An Rusong that the courtyard where Luo Quanyi was planning to take action used to belong to Luo Quanyi's mother. It is said that his mother seems to be the underground lover of a certain big shot in Korea, and Luo Quan is also the illegitimate son of that big shot.
Because of this, as a boy, Luo Quan was sent to settle in the United States after he was born, and became an American citizen. The purpose of this arrangement was to prevent him from competing for the family's status as an adult. heritage.
Of course, there is no serious source for these legend-like news. Therefore, no one can tell whether it is true or false, but Macaulay can be sure that the courtyard is still It is a worthwhile investment. If An Rusong can really buy it for 9 billion won, he will definitely not lose money in the future.
In addition, Macaulay also suggested that he go to the United States to buy two properties in places such as Los Angeles and New York. The prices of real estate are now falling. The most important thing is that some banks are auctioning real estate at very high prices. Very affordable. Of course, if you wait a few more months, it is estimated that the price will be even lower, and you should be able to make a lot of money by hunting the bottom.
When the three of them went downstairs and arrived in the parking lot, Mike asked again about An Rusong's attack. He got the news from Thomson, but he didn't know the specific situation.
An Rusong did not hide anything. He briefly recounted the attack and said that he was looking for two reliable bodyguards through Thomson.
Mike really regarded An Rusong as a friend. After he heard that the guy who launched the attack had not been found, he suggested that An Rusong contact Lieutenant Colonel Wilder before the bodyguards were in place.
According to Mike, Wilder’s hands are not very clean, but it is precisely because his hands are not very clean that he can contact some people with mixed identities, and, people like him , as long as he is given a sum of money, he will dare to do some obviously less legal things, so it should not be difficult to find two temporary bodyguards from him.
However, An Rusong still rejected Mike's proposal. On the one hand, he didn't want to find people with dirty hands as bodyguards. On the other hand, even if he wanted to find bodyguards, he didn't want to find that kind of bodyguards. The bodyguard was too conspicuous. Otherwise, when he proposed conditions with Thomson, he would not have deliberately required that the bodyguard must be Korean.
(End of this chapter)